A Safe Space (Someone Else's Fairytale Book 4) Read Free Page B

you Little Miss Sunshine?” He chuckles.
    “How was your day?”
    “If the label tries to screw me over one more time, I’m gonna walk.”
    He said this two rounds of negotiation ago, and one before that.
    “I swear,” he goes on, “they told me that Logan and I could pick our own songs, but then they want final say even though we have six multi-platinum albums. Ben’s about to release another single, and we’ve got to get out there ourselves, but we can’t if they keep trying to rob us. They’re acting like us starting over without the band means we’re at square one, and I don’t think that’s right.”
    I do, but I’m not going to say that out loud. His band, Triple Cross, dominated the pop charts for years, but they’ve broken up now and that era is over. Ben, the guy he’s complaining about, is a former band mate, who now has a strong solo career. Just because Triple Cross publicity worked for Ben doesn’t mean it’ll work for Zach and Logan (the other 2/3 of Triple Cross). I’m in the same boat. As Veronica Pryce, my albums went platinum. As Lizzie Warner, labels aren’t sure they even want to sign me.
    “Okay, sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t dump on you.”
    “You know it’s fine.”
    He smiles at me, and I wait for him to turn away before I shut my eyes and try to ignore the ache in my chest. Once upon a time, we were meant to be.
    “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Lizzie. Seriously. You’re the best.”
    This car ride really needs to end now. I focus my attention on the reflections of streetlights sliding over the glass of my window and the pitch darkness beyond.
    When we get back to my apartment building (Zach has a place here too), he rides with me up the elevator to my place, where we find Kyra seated in the living room, reading a textbook open on the coffee table. She looks up at him and smiles. He goes to flop down on the couch next to her. They cross their legs towards each other, and just like that, they’ve walled off their own little corner of the universe where they can gaze into each other’s eyes and laugh at each other’s jokes without interruption.
    I force a smile as I walk past them, get my dinner, and then retreat to my room. I hope this doesn’t seem too sullen of me. I am happy those two are together because I know how much Zach loves Kyra. There’s also no one more deserving of a good relationship than my roommate. I just can’t always deal with being in the same room as them.

    My room looks like the set of All About Veronica . Pink is what I chose when I hired my decorator (yet another expense I now regret), maybe because I’ve played Veronica so long that this is where I’m comfortable. Or maybe because I’ve lived such a sheltered life that I’m still a little girl inside.
    On my bed is a pile of very worn, beat-up stuffed animals. I keep everything fans send me and own a whole bank of storage units to house it all. These particular toys belong to fans of mine who are no more, people who died as children from disease, accidents, and even a couple of murders. When I received the first of these, a dingy yellow cat with no whiskers or nose that had once belonged to a girl who’d lost her battle with leukemia, I brought it with me to my next interview and posed with it in the photo shoot, and that started a trend. More stuffed animals followed, often from children I’d visited in the hospital. My personal assistant helped me sort out the real ones from the hoaxes, and here they sit, little careworn survivors of a silent war. I suppose it’s morbid of me to keep them around, but it’s not like I could ever get rid of them.
    I nudge them over to make room to sit on the bed and open up my laptop. Blood Ritual is available for streaming from its network’s website. I settle myself in to watch.

    Forty minutes later, I dab tears from my eyes and close my laptop with shaking hands. If that’s what I have to compete with, I’m done for. There’s no